The Antares rocket carrying an unmanned Cygnus suffered a 'catastrophic anomaly' seconds after liftoff from NASA's Wallops flight facility in Virginia at 06:22 PM EDT. Cygnus was packed with 5,000 pounds (2.268 tons) of food and supplies, scientific experiments destined to the International Space Station. It was the third cargo mission under a $1.9 billion contract Orbital Sciences has won from NASA.

Boeing conducted the first flight of the remotely piloted X-48C experimental Blended Wing Body (BWB) unmanned aircraft yesterday at the NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The flight lasted 9 minutes and the aircraft climbed to an altitude of 5,500 feet before landing back on the dray lakebed.

The US Air Force says its scientists have identified the root cause of the hypoxia-like events occured in its F-22A Raptor stealth fighters and linked the issue with the supply of oxygen delivered to pilots, not the quality of oxygen they were breathing. Two changes are being implemented to correct the oxygen supply issue - removing a diagnostic filter to increasing the air flow, and foregoing with the high altitude pressure suite, suspected to cause some of the problems.

Millions of small debris orbiting earth at Low Earth Orbit (LEO - at altitudes of 2,000 kilometers and below) are posing serious risk to manned and unmanned spacecraft. Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) suggest that ballistic missiles loaded with tons of tungsten dust could be used to ‘sweep’ these objects from their LEO orbit, slowing and lowering them into the upper atmosphere, where they will decay the heat generated from drag induced by the upper earth atmosphere.

The Phantom Ray unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) is a fighter-sized technology demonstrator designed as a flying test bed for advanced technologies. Under the Phantom Ray technology demonstration program...

NASA, DARPA and Northrop Grumman are planning to conduct a demonstration of an in-flight aerial refueling between two Global Hawk autonomous aerial vehicles. The flight will be conducted at high altitude, highlighting fully autonomous performance of this critical phase of the flight, which will be a key factor in extending the Global Hawk's future missions.

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